Strum Kenny: Islanders need a vision

We have such riches on the Island – great towns and villages, restaurants and arts venues, beautiful homes, world-class beaches, excellent schools and colleges, strong businesses, outstanding medical expertise and a unique research base in the alliance of Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. What we lack is a shared vision of what all this adds up to – and shorthand for expressing it.

Most of us have a very good life on the Island. We feel a part of our village, maybe our town, our school district, church or synagogue, health club. But there is really nothing that unites us as Long Islanders beyond high taxes and the frustrations of the LIE. We need to know and be able to convey to others what makes Long Island special.

Long Island is the largest island in the United States, with a population greater than 17 states; it is widely divergent in attitudes and interests. According to the Long Island Index, together Nassau and Suffolk counties have 1,200 square miles, a population of 2.75 million people and 901 different governmental entities. The Island also has a burgeoning wine industry, gorgeous vistas, powerful high-tech initiatives and unique opportunities to go green, produce advanced energy solutions and preserve our natural bounty in both land and marine environments.

To encapsulate the essence of living on Long Island seems a monumental task, but we’ve seen successful efforts in even larger contexts.

New York City with its 8.3 million people has that sense of “us,” despite the multiplicity of races, ethnicities, social classes and financial conditions. The doorman and the billionaire, the city official and the trash collector, share their pride as New Yorkers. I(heart)NY, Milton Glaser’s logo created in the City’s financial crisis in the ‘70s, still expresses the feelings of New Yorkers and attracts millions of visitors to the Big Apple.

Texans, spread over 270,000 square miles of vastly diverse geography, revel in what they consider their common culture even though their population is also remarkably diverse. Whoever they are and wherever they come from, Texans share their Texas pride and enjoyment of Friday night football, cowboy boots, barbecue – and the university.

Even the whole of Europe, with 500 million people, 27 countries, 23 official languages and 4.3 million square kilometers, is establishing a sense of commonality. The glue for the European community began as just the euro and common passport access, and every year the Continent gets stronger as it becomes more unified. If Europe can do it, we ought to be able to manage on Long Island.

The sense of being a people, whether as an island, city, state or continent, does not mean that we are less involved with the smaller communities that make up our lives: the colleagues at work, other parents whose children play for the same sports teams as ours, people who share the pews at religious services, neighbors on the cul-de-sac. But it does make us proud to be part of something that is big, important and unique.

To build this sense of Long Island pride, we should first agree on a common group of goals. Let’s begin with how to keep or attract young people to live here; we need their vitality, creativity and ideas. The Long Island Index found that 65 percent of people ages 18 to 34 said they would probably move away from the Island in the next five years. That number resonates because between 1990 and 2006, the national population ages 25 to 34 declined by 8 percent, but on Long Island the decline was 35 percent. We could start with a campaign to keep them here. A successful effort would require housing that young people can afford, “downtowns” to give a sense of energy, place and to provide venues for entertainment and new professional opportunities, all as a lure for the brightest and most skilled of the next generation to live here.

That would be a great, game-changing beginning. Then we could, with some optimism, tackle other priorities, from rationally priced housing to business development to lower local taxes.

But first we need to agree on at least some common attitudes and shared goals, and be willing to work for them together. Then we need the right language to convey who we are and what we share. It won’t be easy; in fact, it might even be really hard. But it could and should happen. The payoff would be extraordinary.